Reece James sensational as 10-man Chelsea impress in Arsenal draw
Straight Outta Cobham: The Athletic FC's Chelsea show
The Athletic
4.9 • 871 Ratings
🗓️ 1 December 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It feels like more than just a point...
Matt Davies-Adams has got an OG SOC crew of The Athletic's Simon Johnson and Liam Twomey alongside him to look back on Sunday's 1-1 draw with league leaders Arsenal at Stamford Bridge.
The gang reflect on the pretty remarkable point picked up against the Gunners given the first half red card dished out to Moises Caicedo, the maturity showed by Reece James and the rest of the team to contain Mikel Arteta's side - and the overall growth of this young squad over just a matter of months to show they really can be competitive against the very best the Premier League and Europe has to offer.
Next up - the Blues kick off a run of three straight away games when they travel to Elland Road to face Leeds on Wednesday night. How will Enzo Maresca tinker ahead of that one? And will Cole Palmer be thrown back in from the start?
Plus! Dom Fifield pops by to tell us more about The Athletic’s brand new book ‘The Soccer 100’ - billed as ‘a celebration of the beautiful game and its 100 greatest players’. Who of a Chelsea persuasion gets a mention?!
We'll be back on Monday to look back on Saturday's trip to Bournemouth AND look ahead to UCL MD6 as the Blues head out to Bergamo to face Atalanta on Tuesday night.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic FC. |
| 0:03.1 | It's straight out to Cobham, a show about Chelsea FC from the Athletic. |
| 0:18.8 | Today, beating Arsenal 1-1, |
| 0:25.4 | Caycedo gets some enforced rest and leads, leads, leads. At least there's no history of the type of reckless aggression that might lead to more red cards in that one. |
| 0:29.5 | Available for free wherever get your podcasts and via the Athletic app. This is straight out of common. |
| 0:36.1 | And it's a miserable Monday in the United Kingdom weather-wise, but we're feeling pretty cheered after an excellent Chelsea performance, albeit one that didn't yield all three points on Sunday. We're going to reflect on Arsenal. We're going to look ahead to Leaves. There'll be other bits in between as well. You know the drill by now. Listener. Or maybe you're new to the show. If so, and you like it, leaves a nice review. Apple podcast, Spotify, wherever get your pods, all helps us out very much. Remember, you can find us on socials at S.O. Cobbond pod or email the show at your leisure, SOC at theathletic.com. I got an OG lineup today, The Athletics, two Chelsea reporters from day one, fresh from Stamford Bridge on Sunday. |
| 1:14.5 | It's the housewife's favourite. |
| 1:15.5 | Simon Johnson, how are you doing, Simon? |
| 1:17.9 | When did that happen? |
| 1:20.2 | Yeah, I'm very well. |
| 1:21.5 | I'm going to try and be morose just for James Woods, if he's out there listening. |
| 1:28.3 | But it's going to be very hard for me to do that today for obvious reasons. |
| 1:32.6 | For clarity, that is not James Woods, the actor. |
| 1:35.9 | I'm going to go ahead. |
| 1:37.0 | Yeah, no, it is the actor. |
| 1:38.9 | All right, okay. |
| 1:39.5 | Yeah, we're best buds. |
| 1:42.1 | And we've only got Liam to me with us as well. Liam, what a delight to have |
| 1:47.5 | you back. How are you? Delighted to be back. I thought with the suspensions mounting up, |
| 1:51.9 | I need as be back in the rotations. Yeah, Kerris is definitely in the red zone, for sure. Fantastic |
| 1:57.7 | to have you with us. And I'm so pleased, pleased Liam I'm going to let you adjudicate |
| 2:01.4 | prematurely first you know how long I've spent changing nappies in the last oh and not sleeping |
... |
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